Landscape Restoration

What is Landscape Restoration?

Restoration experts here at Eden define landscape restoration as a holistic, standards-based approach to restoration and conservation that generates environmental, socioeconomic, and biodiversity benefits for the well-being of communities and the planet. Landscape restoration goes beyond planting trees to encompass a series of large-scale restoration interventions aimed at providing environmental and socioeconomic benefits to fulfill current and future needs, as depicted in the Six Principles of Forest and Landscape Restoration.

Within the context of landscape restoration, project activities' design aims to ensure the drivers of historical deforestation and degradation are addressed through comprehensive, holistic programming. The goal is that by addressing these drivers, long-term sustainable restoration will be implemented, and impacts on ecosystem health and function, socioeconomic development, and biodiversity conservation will be directly traced back to those interventions. Using this approach, Eden supports long-term sustainability in the landscapes that we operate, laying the groundwork for healthy relationships between people and the landscapes on which we all depend.

How Eden Restores Landscapes

Eden collaborates directly with local communities and other key stakeholders (government, community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, and private sector entities) to design and implement restoration projects. Core landscape restoration methods include seedling production, diverse species planting, assisted natural regeneration, agroforestry, seed bed restoration, fire management, and erosion control planting. With each of these methods, Eden uses avoided conversion, high-quality indigenous species, and prioritizes biodiversity. Through collaboration and science-based restoration practices, Eden will generate substantive benefits designed explicitly by and for each community that supports their well-being, raises living conditions, and restores their environment.

How Eden Monitors, Evaluates, and Verifies Its Work

Eden’s monitoring and evaluation (M&E) approach is iterative, based on the principle of continuous learning and improvement. Over nearly two decades of field implementation of various restoration strategies, Eden has learned what works and what doesn’t across many different contexts. These learnings are incorporated into the design of M&E strategies and practices, tools, and methods.

Eden uses evidence-based approaches to our restoration work and is deeply committed to adaptive management. This includes incorporating the most recent scientific findings, changing methods as they develop, and impact management planning. It also means tailoring Eden’s monitoring approaches to the context of each project to ensure that they are robust, defensible, and repeatable.

Depending on the context, Eden monitors project interventions through pre-, during, and post-intervention activities. These monitoring activities include but are not limited to:

• Conducting robust baseline inventories for biomass and carbon and regularly re-measuring for performance against these baselines.
• Implementing routine socioeconomic assessments in project areas, assessing changes against these baselines, and highlighting where attribution to project activities can be made.
• Routinely reviewing landcover change analyses using remote sensing products and tools and assessing project performance remotely against empirical findings from field-level sampling.
• Routine spot-checks for consistency and survival estimates.
• Reporting and certification against external standards.
  

Each project is developed, managed, and evaluated according to best practices and globally recognized standards. This means Eden’s landscape restoration projects align with national policies, commitments, and priorities. This also means that projects can be developed to meet and exceed emerging carbon standards, and other biodiversity standards as they develop.

Where Eden Operates

Landscape Restoration Impact

Overall, Eden’s landscape restoration projects will mitigate the drivers of deforestation, employ local community members, plant new trees, restore and maintain biodiversity, and facilitate sustainable livelihood options. Eden will track and report on its progress through the following categories:

• Hectares under management
• Number of landscape projects
• Individuals employed in underserved geographies
• Number of women and youth employed
• Income diversification (I.e., beekeeping and agroforestry activities)
• Quantified carbon/GHG emissions removals